


The Pointless Snippet Saga

by rillaelilz



Category: Poldark - All Media Types
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-15
Updated: 2015-05-18
Packaged: 2018-03-30 17:54:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3946147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rillaelilz/pseuds/rillaelilz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Take #1: ... But then there’s nothing quite ordinary about Demelza. (post 1x02)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> PSS - or that's what I called the small collection of thingies I wrote along the way. XD Also showing my laziness in looking for a proper title for each one of them (but I just suck at naming thing so bad XD). Some of these might be more inspired by the book than the tv show, but never in a particularly noticeable way. :)

He spends a blur of months, the tender wedge ‘tween spring and summer, watching her, learning the crooked angle of her vowels, adjusting to the quick tempo of her syllables and spiky moods - they share those, though, Ross must admit to it - bumping along on a thread of wet spells and blossoms and sunny fields, and Demelza’s giggles, her clean face and clear skin, his own renewed puzzlement. _  
_

It’s  _funny_ , how they seem to gravitate towards one another, how easily they can share silence and words alike, enjoying this companionable  _something_ that more or less built itself on such a thin base.

Oh, it’s funny  _indeed_ , how she only seems to see a mere human being when she looks at him - not the limping Captain with a scarred cheek or the quick-tempered man with weird ideas wound about his head.

It’s funny how even now, with the weather so damp and that slight catch in Ross’ stride - like a hiccup in between his steps and the raw feeling of needles twisting in his ankle -, she pays no mind whatsoever to him or his poorly masked ordeal.

She doesn’t offer him her help, which is mindful enough of his pride that Ross could thank her.  
  
She just walks beside him as they slowly head towards home, a colourful, messy bunch of flowers in her arms, mud on her heels, a sprinkle of golden freckles peeking from where her sleeve is threatening to fall off her shoulder.  
  
The sun seems to adore her, he notices with parted chapped lips. It paints strokes of gold in her hair, and it’s a wonder how dusk can turn unruly curls into pale flames dancing with the soft breeze.  
But then there’s nothing quite ordinary about Demelza.

She throws curious little glances at him, a joyous laughter in her eyes - echoes of a hundred  _thank you_ s and  _I’m grateful_ s and  _how happy she surely is here, sur_ , hanging in the air between them when Prudie calls them from the house, bellowing - with a smudge of fondness, to be fair - at the girl to go fetch the plates for mister Ross’ supper.

He watches her skitter with Garrick trotting right behind her with a lopsided grin.

The truth, and Ross keeps that as a warm, endearing certainty in the back of his mind, is that  _he is grateful, too_. He just… keeps that to himself most of the time.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stemming once again from 1x02.

She sits down, plate in her hand and curls bouncing by her forehead as if in protest, and it’s like her body’s claiming this place as its own with its mere posture, the unfamiliar rustling of her frock as it unfolds on the ground. 

It’s like she’s forcing her way into his line of vision, and yet her eyes are _begging_  him, begging him to  _Understand, please understand that this is home to me now_.

This is desperation, it is - Ross would know that anywhere - and a quiet one at that. Just as long as Demelza herself can keep quiet, though - as long as she can just whisper it and let it slowly seep in, that she belongs here,  _here_ , right here where she’s sitting next to him, her soul bare and bright before his eyes; filling up empty spaces she’s not even aware were there before she brought herself into his world.

Oh, how ridiculous, how  _insulting_  it must have sounded, Ross trying to free her of all obligations, when this is no duty to her. When she’s clinging onto Nampara just as much as he is, holding on for dear life in case the tides try and cast her away.

And once she’s said it -  _I belong here,_ stated and murmured, _I belong here_  - once it’s splayed right before him like the sea beneath this cliff, once’s he’s felt pure and unabashed  _relief_  for the first time in months -  _oh, Ross, you fool of a man_  - he realizes… No, he doesn’t want her to go either.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And this is basically Ross being in denial, somewhere in episode 1x03. Or what I like to call pre-blue-dress domestic bliss. XD

They can stay like this.

She can pick up wildflowers and strew the house with sweet scents and tiny shocks of colour, and he can find solace in her savoury chatter and sparse curses - and chirpy songs when Demelza thinks nobody’s listening.

Ross can try to fathom the moon on her skin and the tidal waves in her eyes, light blue and crystal green blended together in equal measure, and Demelza can still take him aback with pasties and ale.

He can give her a home and she can  _make_  it one.

He can learn the sound of his name anew when it’s kissed by her lips, and recognize the peculiar flavour of hers on his tongue.

She can be  _herself_  and cause him to find old, worn out shreds of himself and pick it all up like flotsam and jetsam finally floating to the surface after the storm, with a smile tugging at the corners of his lips and laughter rising full and ticklish in his stomach.

She can save him, and he can tell himself that he saved her too.

They can have each other and damn the world for a nice and long while -  
Demelza can hum his life away and Ross can spend the rest of his days scolding her, mirth hiding right behind the seams of his mouth.

They can stay like this.

Forever sounds too pretentious and  _‘til death do us part_  is not their oath to take - not now, not them, not  _Captain Poldark_  and  _Tom Carne’s snatched daughter._  But, as long as they live… he’ll be glad to have her by his side, for _as long as they live._


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one I wrote for my dear [Vicky](http://vickymaus.tumblr.com/). <3 We were both wondering about some things, so... yeah XD Set in episode 1x03.

_(I meant no harm.)_

He’d thought he could sweat it off, scents and sounds and the tingle in his veins; force it all out of his system with every swing of the scythe and the raging sun burning into his scalp. But it just keeps on flashing right before his eyes, and Ross sees the curve of  _her_  lips in the gleaming blade, feels the pull of her skin beneath his fingers, her warmth where sunlight shines bright upon his back.

_(I thought maybe you might let me wear it-)_

It’s his fault, and his fault alone. His shame if he thought he could hear the rustle of the sheets clutched in her hands just now, when the grass fell by his feet with a hiss.

_(Let it be true-)_

His grasp on the scythe tightens, his muscles sore and burning.  
Fool.  _Fool._  
_Nothing will ever be the same, now._  
A covey of flowers scatters on the ground along with the weed, meek and broken.  
_Nothing._

-

He can see Elizabeth’s half pitying, half alarmed look, and  _this is how it’ll always be, isn’t it -_  and he hates it, hates the way the flowers fall limply in Demelza’s hands, hates to be able to read it in her eyes, the seed of doubt that Elizabeth so carefully watered,

_See, they’re fading already._

and of course,  _of course_  Demelza must think -  _this_  is what happened to whatever was between them, and she’s scolding herself for believing that it could make it throught the night and thrive under the sun.

And Ross  _hates_  it, he hates it all.

Because he was lost soul and body and hands and mouth in her hair last night, and yet now he pities her, too.

This is his doing. His burden to bear, for stifling the light in Demelza’s eyes, for wishing she hadn’t come between  _them_ , for being unable to stand even the sight of her and yet feeling something akin to anger seethe in his blood because  _nobody_ , not even Elizabeth has the right to look at her like this.

-

Before sunset blazes on the horizon, his thoughts have got the best of him.

There is something he could do.  _The very least_  he could do to make Demelza ‘ _respectable’_  again, although he laughs at himself right there and then because, as far as their community is concerned, gentry and half-starved poor alike, Demelza stopped being  _respectable_  the moment she crossed Nampara’s threshold.

And even this, even this is his doing, this and her skin set aflame and her breath, her body coming undone in his hands.

The truth is that he’s selfish, and weak, and his generosity’s nothing more than a travesty.

He watches her climb up the hill, watches her leave him  _for good_  and all he feels is this urge to - to  _just bring her back_ , to take her home, home with him where she belongs, because he’s afraid. Without her, his days will lose their balance. Without her, he will be alone.  _Without her_  has stopped being bearable even as a thought months ago.

_He’s addicted_. Ross knows as soon as Demelza turns towards him, yearning and desperation painted on her face with painful clarity. He’s been clinging on to her for so long that the mere prospect of losing her doesn’t even stand to reason anymore.

-

She can’t believe him,  _won’t_  believe him. People will hate him, Demelza says. He’ll be an outcast in his own world, and that can’t be allowed. Not for her sake. What’s the point of it anyway, if he can’t bear to look at her anymore?

Ross could laugh.  _Oh, she saw that, too._

That’s when he dismounts, and the ground beneath his feet is merciful enough to keep him upright and give him new strength; as if he were Antaeus and his Heracles this girl who refuses to bear his name, for no reason other than it would be  _tainted_  by her own.

He corners her -  _oh sweet child, as if cliffs had walls_  - and she feels trapped and Ross can  _see_  it, as easily as he can see her head shake when his hands close around her shoulders, and Demelza’s spare belongings slip off and fall in a heap on the ground, much like her dress did last night. The memory is so fresh and vivid, they both shiver at that.

And she tenses, and he leans in, ruthless and selfish still, his eyes chained to hers -  _I’m looking at you, I’m taking an oath to look only at you for the rest of my life_  - until at last they slide closed; until their foreheads are touching and their noses brushing and Ross can  _feel_  the shudder running through her right beneath his fingers. It could hurt, if it weren’t so enthralling.

“Come back with me,” he murmurs, hands stroking her upper arms as gently as he dares.  
“Be my wife,” he says, and he knows that Demelza can see right through him, hear what was left unsaid. Stay by my side. Don’t leave me. I’m  _that_ helpless without you.

She swallows, rests her palms against his stomach, fingers curling on his jerkin, and answers the only way she can - the only way she knows how, with the only words that feel right on her lips whenever Ross Poldark asks something of her.

“ _Yes, sir._ ”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaand here we are with the last one :) 1x04-based.

It’s her very heart singing out to him.

And it shocks him, because Ross had been so caught up in his attempts to make things work fine and smooth between them, he’d never once stopped to  _look_  - he’d never given himself the chance to see what was in plain view, hidden just behind the gleam in Demelza’s eyes.

_She loves him_ , and it catches Ross by surprise. Of all epiphanies,  _this one_  hits him the hardest. She loves him and she doesn’t ask for anything more than to love him.

Demelza’s voice doesn’t falter. It croons and keens and unfolds around him, so sweet that his heart could burst from it.

_I love you_ , she’s saying, and for the first time Ross is bothering to listen - and maybe it will make it up for all the times he was too blind or just deaf or had numb fingers strumming her soul’s strings.

_I love you_ , and it’s such a scary notion, because Demelza lays her heart by his feet, bare and whole, for the mere purpose of letting Ross have it, even when he’s given her little more than bits and crumbs of his own.

_I love you_ , she sings, in her simple and longing melody,  _How I wish you could love me, too_.

And with his next heartbeat, Ross finds himself humming back.

_I do_.


End file.
